Dear Diary--A Journal From Purgatory, Patrick Sean Lee [thriller novels to read TXT] 📗

A fireplace…and plant a garden outside. I was thinking of that while you were away.”

“Then we will. But after we eat and bathe ourselves in your lake.”

We ate and spoke about small things. Her dreams of a cottage with a garden outside, mostly. I laughed as she drew pictures of it in the sand beside the lake. I have no tools; no affinity for building, even if I did have tools. There is no HGTV here to help me out.

The lake.

Will anyone other than myself read these words, Diary? In a way, I hope not. After all, that is the whole idea behind you. A place of written refuge.

We made love on the sand…the sand that is reddish in color, flowing down to a body of remarkably crystal clear water. As physics demands, the water reflects the color of the sky; a deep blue. It is a smallish lake (as I remember them), sitting like a tiny sapphire in its vast green setting, and it moves according to the desires of the rising and falling breezes.

Afterward we lay and talked more, Teresa’s head resting on my chest. She found it odd that other than the soft lapping of the waves onto the shore, this place is deathly quiet. Or serenely quiet. That silence she spoke of did not register at first, but she is right. We’ve heard no birds chirping; no far away hoots or calls of other creatures roaming deep in the forest. Purgatory is inhabited, though. Someone built the city. Yet, maybe whoever built it suffered some calamity, and all that is left of them is the stone they stacked, and dust in the streets. Or maybe they are there, spirits like we are, but dogs and cats and birds and fish and bears possess no soul, and therefore do not continue on after their deaths.

What calamity might they have suffered, if indeed that is the case? What mass disaster can befall the dead? Perhaps they are there, and they are alive, and we are simply ghosts, invisible to their mortal or immortal eyes.

In time these questions will be answered, even if we stay where we are and I build that cottage for my wife. Should that transpire, I will eventually go to the city alone and find out.

Goodnight, friend. Eyes that see my thoughts.


March 16, Eternity

Dear Diary,

Teresa admitted to me that her anxiety concerning the “It” or “Thing” hanging in the air was most likely just an ungrounded fear. A carryover from her old life coupled with her unfortunate (or fortunate, I corrected her; we met there) stay in Hell. She is a woman, after all, given as they are to often-irrational fears. She saw my superior reasoning dispel any notion of some thing being able to harm us.

“If we don’t like the city and what it harbors, then we’ll say ‘adios’ and leave,” I told her. “There’s no drawbridge; likely no demons. What the hell, let’s go see it.”

And so we set off again.

Two days we traveled, one of them spent sitting beneath a car-sized leaf during a downpour. We arrived last evening at the top of a rise overlooking the city, and have decided to wait until “sunrise” before entering.

The buildings were ablaze with lights in the darkness, and despite the fact we saw no vehicles of any sort, we did see movement along the main thoroughfare. Creatures of varying stature and physical make-up ambled in and out of the buildings visible from our vantage point a quarter mile away. They rather reminded me of some of those seen in Star Wars—not many of them like the inhabitants of New York or Los Angeles. Oh wait. I do recall seeing many of their kind in Los Angeles where I lived. When I lived.

I have gathered what dry sticks I could find and built a small fire. Not for warmth, but as a comfort. I did it the old fashioned way; by spinning a pointed stick on top of another. Once I was an Eagle Scout, Diary.

Teresa is snuggled in my arms, close to my fire. I know she is apprehensive still, but I have assured her time and again that nothing in that city has the power to harm her. Of that I am positive.

We’ll enter at first light.

Good night.


March 17


Oh man, I hope they don’t have festivals here, Diary.

Well. To our day.

Not many citizens of this incredible city were up and about when we entered beneath the several story-high stone arch. An engineering marvel, that arch, seeing as how it rested not on the ground, but several inches above it in midair! And confounding to both of us, something swatted Teresa on the behind just as we cleared it. She shrieked and turned quickly, catching sight of what can only be described as a granite hand attached to a granite arm, receding back into the left arch leg. Both of us heard a low, rumbling chuckle. She made a move to return and slap the arch-thing-creature, but I pulled her away. God knows if she’d made it angry…well. Anyway, she probably would only have managed to bruise her hand, or worse, given it the idea to grab hold of her. What would a sixty-foot living stone structure do with a woman, I wondered? A moot question, and I passed it off. We were free of it. I did wonder, though, about the rest of the architecture here. The hotel we would likely enter to inquire about a room during our stay…however long that might turn out to be. Would we be entering into the belly of a perverted beast?

We happened upon a group of men after we’d walked a few blocks down the thoroughfare. I say men, but I must qualify that. They were dressed in shirts and slacks, had two legs and arms each, but their faces! Their mouths were situated roughly on their foreheads, above two bulging eyes that gawked at us as we walked by. They were salivating, or so it appeared to me, diary. I immediately decided that we would be better off not asking them any questions, or even greeting them. Who knows, maybe they were out searching for breakfast. Us.

We rushed off, Teresa shooting a glance back at them over her shoulder every other step. In time we came upon an elderly looking couple. A real him and a real her with mouths situated where they should be. I decided to talk to them—see if they knew of a place where we might get a room.

“Good morning,” I said with a smile.

“Good morning.” Him.

“Good morning.” Her.

I cut to the chase.

“Where are we?”

Him. “Beg your pardon?”

“The name of this city. We’re travelling. We’ve recently come from Hell.”

Both of them looked at us as though we were crazy, and they hurried off muttering to one another, shaking their heads. Perhaps I should have lied and said we were from Mars.

“Maybe they’re from Heaven,” I said to Teresa. “They looked shocked. I wonder why?”

“I told you. You’re naïve,” she replied. “The next time we meet someone, don’t tell them anything.”

We walked a few blocks farther into the city, and sure enough found a hotel. A nice-enough looking building set back off the street—the foundation looked as if it was anchored to the earth very firmly, anyway. We entered and walked to the desk. A short, balding man with reading glasses glanced up from the papers he held when he heard us enter.

“Good morning. We’d first like to know what the name of this place is, and then ask about a room for the night,” I said.

He removed his glasses and looked us over. “Like the sign outside says, this is the Zdiglvrneeg-pos Arms.” He hesitated.

“Oh,” Teresa said nicely. “We thought that was graffiti someone had…”

“We have a few rooms available. You want a view or just someplace to sleep?”

“One with the finest view,” Teresa said to him cheerfully.

“Very good. That would be suite 2651, the Penthouse. Just sign in and I’ll get the key.” He pushed the guestbook forward, handed me a pen, and then turned to retrieve the key from its hook on the wall behind him. I signed us in as Mr. and Mrs. Terence McGillicutty—a bogus last name—and he returned. He glanced down at the names in the book.

“Very good, Mr. and Mrs. McGillicutty. That will be two million Secflavids. Cash or credit card. We accept either.”

Dilemma.

“Umm…we don’t have any cash or credit cards. I mean, we left all that back on Earth,” I explained.

My answer seemed to confuse him. “Earth?”

“Okay, Hell,” I said.

The man threw both of us a sour look as he picked up an instrument that vaguely resembled a cell phone. He waved a hand over it. It lit up, and then a voice came from somewhere inside it. “Central Station…”

We backed out and took off down the broad avenue, wondering when we’d hear the first wail of a siren or a phalanx of spirits come swooping down on us.

For the next few hours Teresa and I wandered up and down the streets, passively greeting those creatures we encountered with simple, inconspicuous nods of our heads, discussing our narrow options given the fact that food and housing (and probably everything else) would require money.

“Let’s just leave,” she implored me.

“Not yet, dearest. We’ve only just arrived. Surely there’s…”

“Don’t

call me dearest. You promised if we didn’t like it here we could leave,” she snapped.

Diary, we’ve had our first argument, and we haven’t even enjoyed a honeymoon yet. We went on, though, circling the area we had walked through, Teresa nudging me at every corner to turn in the direction of the “brazen” gate. At length we came upon a dilapidated-looking building sitting far back off the street between its wealthier neighbors. I stopped, curious to see how or why such a place could exist in this sparkling metropolis. There was a sign chiseled in the stone lintel of the doorway that caught my eye, written with symbols I’d never seen before, and a man in a hooded brown wrap standing just outside its closed doors. I left Teresa on the street and approached him.

The man raised his head as I approached, Diary, and at first sight of his eyes I faltered and considered returning to Teresa’s side immediately. They glowed red in an expressionless face, half-covered as it was by his cowl. He said nothing, rather extended an arm, pointing toward the doors. I glanced at it, following his direction, and then my eyes moved upward again to the strange inscription. I pointed at it, bringing my eyes back to him as I did. He smiled…not a normal, friendly smile, rather one of